Making Nature: How we see animals | Wellcome Collection

No matter how you see nature now, you’ll never see it the same way again.

Kicking off a year-long exploration into our relationship with nature, this major exhibition examines what we think, feel and value about other species and the consequences this has for the world around us.

It brings together over 100 fascinating objects from literature, film, taxidermy and photography to reveal the hierarchies in our view of the natural world and consider how these influence our actions, or inactions, towards the planet.

This was a very thought provoking exhibition, and made me think about the human relationship with nature and animals in a new way. Some thoughts:

The human urge to sort and classify and label is very strong

The way we see ourselves in relation to other living things is CONSTRUCTED by us and thus necessarily places us at the top

The relationships have been set up as a hierarchy – Religion? Science?

Everything could be sorted and classified in many other ways

Once a classification hierarchy has been created is seems as though living things were ‘meant’ to be in those relationships with other living things